


The End of the World as We Know It

by PseudoLeigha



Series: The Reasons Mary Potter Still Isn't Done (Works in Progress) [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Tom was adopted, Tom was raised with magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 07:09:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11412834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoLeigha/pseuds/PseudoLeigha
Summary: The one where Fem!Tom is adopted by Dorea Black's parents (yes, MP!Mary's great-grandparents).Tam is fostered into the House of Black before she is old enough to truly cultivate the conscious need for power and control over her own life that motivate Tom in MP. Instead, she is exposed to more sophisticated ideas of power and learns to play the games of spies and Empires at the knee of her adoptive father, Draco Cadmus. If there is any family in Magical Britain that knows how to raise a sadistic, sociopathic child as a mostly-functional member of Society, it is the House of Black. The Lestrange contribution, well… let's just say there's a reason for their family name. Bioalchemy is a bit of a specialty of theirs, and it tends to give one a rather warped perspective on life, death, and so-called human limitations.





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> Tam, like Tom, is a natural Legilimens, rather absurdly powerful, and scarily intelligent. Unlike Tom, however, she has the advantages of having been trained from a young age to hide the crazy and being homeschooled by the Blacks. She meets Dumbledore at the age of thirteen by applying to be his apprentice, well after her façade of social acceptability is perfected, and becomes one of his closest and most trusted confidants. She earns her Mastery in Alchemy under Dumbledore before following her father into the Office of Foreign and Domestic Affairs as a Black Cloak (ie, an agent of the Ministry who maintains the Statute of Secrecy throughout the British Empire, often outside the technical purview of Magical Britain or any ICW state, by any means necessary).
> 
> (In the Mary Potter continuity, the Black Cloaks were almost entirely eliminated by Grindelwald and his supporters, picked off between 1939 and 1942, and the survivors integrated into the Auror Office after the end of Grindelwald's War. In this continuity, thirteen-year-old Tam mentions to her foster father that if she were trying to break the Statute of Secrecy by brute force, the first thing she would do would be to take out the Black Cloaks, as they are the foremost concealment agency in Europe, leading Draco to look into the pattern of disappearances which were initially dismissed as a series of unfortunate but unsuspicious accidents/normal attrition in the ranks.)
> 
> When Dumbledore finally goes to face Grindelwald in 1945, he invites Tam to come with him and back him up. She betrays him, leading to his death, and defects from the Black Cloaks, taking with her a core of loyal supporters who form the basis of an anti-Statutarian movement which opposes both Grindelwald (who has clearly lost sight of his original goals) and the status quo (which is unsustainable). The end-game is a controlled re-introduction of magic to muggle consciousness and perhaps eventually a slow dissolution of the Statute, once muggles have accepted the idea of magic again.

December, 1946

"Hello, Father."

Draco Cadmus, scion of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and faithful Agent of the Office of Foreign and Domestic Affairs, froze at the light, slightly sardonic voice. It came from all around him, from the shadows at the corners of the office, where the light of the lamps did not reach.

"Packing again, I see. Mother will not be pleased, you know. And poor Dorea will be devastated. What are the chances, after all, that you will return in time for her wedding?" ' _Or at all'_ hung unspoken in the air.

A tall, androgynous young woman, dressed in shades of black and grey, stepped out of the darkness. Her black hair was cropped short, framing a too-thin, too-angular, unnaturally pale face, and light eyes that burned with intensity. She held a wand in one hand, its wood as white as her skin, and a knife in the other, its blade the matte black of dragon bone. He could not for the life of him predict her next move from her expression or her carriage, and legilimency was entirely out of the question. If she had not betrayed him to the core, along with everything he stood for, he would be proud. As it was, well… it was difficult to raise a child who grew to be more powerful than oneself, and especially one so ruthlessly driven as his adopted daughter.

"Have you come to kill me, Tam?" he asked, his voice wavering only slightly from his usual confident tone.

She smiled: a small, controlled expression, not her truly delighted, feral grin. "Quite the opposite, actually. I come with a warning: stay clear of Palestine. The attack on Jaffa must be allowed to go forward. My people will handle it."

He could not help but scoff. "Your people. You _betrayed us_. With Albus Dumbledore out of the picture, it's only a matter of time until –"

"Until _someone else_ takes out Grindelwald. You didn't know Dumbledore like I did. Trust me, you wouldn't have liked a world where he was the savior of Europe."

"But he would have upheld the Statute! That is more important than any single nation – even ours!"

"The Statute is unsustainable! I may not agree with Gellert's methods, but I do agree with _that_."

"And what would you have us do? Just… reveal ourselves and the reality of magic? When you have _seen_ the devastation the muggles are capable of inflicting? Move our society to the Crossroads, become refugees, fighting tooth and nail for a meagre, marginalized existence? The Statute is our only hope of retaining our homes – our way of life!"

The young woman glared at him, her eyes flashing red as her magic flared, betraying her anger and frustration, even if her tone did not. "I am not having this argument with you again, Father. We will find a way. If I don't manage it, someone else _will_. But that person will not be Albus Dumbledore, who so feared his own potential that he refrained from taking up against his one-time love until he had destroyed half of Europe – I can't even _imagine_ what he would have done to our people had he won – you know how they like their heroes. And it will not be Gellert Grindelwald, who does the work of the Destructive Power with such abandon that it is all but certain he has lost sight of his initial goal. For that matter, it will not be any of the current world leaders, so caught up in fighting amongst themselves that they do not see the looming threat."

"The so-called 'End of Magic'?" Draco sneered.

"Magic works as it does because we believe it ought to work as it does," Tam snapped back. " _You_ taught me that, if you recall! Well, what do you suppose happens when the world believes that there is no such thing as magic – that it is beyond the reach of we mortals? When five _billion_ muggles believe that magic is the realm of fae-stories and primitive superstition? Hmm? You need only to speak with any of the Powers to see how it is fading. How many wizards are there, in the Western world? Half a million, _maybe_? And we spend all our time and energy killing each other, taking our magic for granted."

"There will _always_ be magic, Tamsyn. It cannot be destroyed any more than the world itself can be destroyed!"

The girl – for despite the approach of her twenty-first birthday and the fact that she had done an adult's work for nearly six years, now, her idealism still marked her as a child in her father's eyes – shook her head slowly. When she spoke, it was with an exhaustion which had not been present only a few seconds before. "And as usual, you're missing the point, Father. _Magic_ may always exist, but what does that matter, if it shifts according to its own laws to lie beyond our reach? But we stray from the purpose of my little visit. You've been assigned to Palestine. If you value your life, you will not accept the mission, and you will tell no one. My people _will_ ensure that the attack on Jaffa goes according to _our_ plan, and I would hate to have to kill you."

He could not resist a jab at the formidable young witch, whom he was certain would not hesitate, if she did believe his death necessary. He had raised her, after all, and the Blacks were nothing if not ruthless. "Sentiment, Tam?"

She rolled her eyes, and he took the split second lapse in her focus to go for his wand. She was faster, disarming him with casual brutality, his shoulder torn from its socket and his wand from his hand, before carrying on the conversation as though he had not moved. "Hardly. The operation will be complex enough without your interference. So don't interfere."

He hesitated, hard-pressed to conceal the pain in his voice as he answered. "I will comply on one condition, Tam."

"What's that?" She raised an eyebrow at him – her go-to expression for nearly every situation about which she truly felt nothing.

"Promise me… promise me that this is not in vain. Tell me you have a plan, that you have not destroyed the Office and betrayed our country and our mission and _me_ for nothing."

"Do you really think so little of me, Father? Do you have so little faith in your own teaching? Of _course_ there is a plan – and one which does not leave us with the scattered servants of a martyred Dark Lord out for revenge, or a Light tyrant at the helm of the government, maintaining a broken system afterward. Grindelwald was necessary to take out Dumbledore, but his time is coming, and you may rest assured that _my_ plan, unlike Dumbledore's, does not end with his death."

And in that moment, Draco saw it: "You're planning to supplant him, take his place."

She did smile, then, truly. "I am planning on changing the world. Did you ever think I would do anything less?"

He shivered as she faded back into the shadows.

It truly was not an easy thing, to be Tam Riddle's father.


	2. The Beginning

The year was 1929, the date November first. It had been three days since the world supposedly ended, and life went on. The adults, preoccupied with very important, grown-up problems of money and resources, comprehensively failed to notice as a rather intelligent, too-quiet, nearly-four-year-old child peered around the corner, into the kitchen of a children's home called Wool's.

All of the adults – Matron Cole, the man Tom Vickers, and the half-dozen variously flighty Girls who cared for the children were seated around the table, discussing the new state of affairs in low, anxious tones. The little girl could feel their worry from the doorway. It made her feel all bubbly inside, like anything was possible – they were all just _waiting_ to see what happened next, really. That was all to the good: none of them were paying any attention to her or the other children – not for the last two days, and not today, either.

She slipped past the open doorway like a shadow, none of the adults the wiser, and let herself out onto the front stoop, reveling in her momentary freedom. Surely one of the Girls would be sent to find her soon enough, but in the meanwhile, she was able to go wherever she liked, do and see whatever she wanted.

She skipped down the walk and out the gate, turning toward the up-scale area of town that lay only a few blocks away. Miss Cara often took the orphans there when it was her turn to supervise their walks, and spent the whole time sighing over pretty clothing and rich men she would never have for herself, much to the little girl's amusement.

Today, unlike the last time they had come this way, there were no happy, mooning, well-dressed couples wandering about, taking their own children or pet dogs out for walks. There were an unusual number of lost-looking, single, rich men, kitted out for the office, wandering around as though they had forgotten where they ought to be, giving off waves of cold: loss, she thought. And so much anger (gathering in the air like lightning before a storm) and bubbling anxious worry that she was surprised no one else seemed to have noticed. Under it all there was a dragging-down feeling of weakness, like new children at the orphanage. But she was pretty sure _all_ of their families couldn't have died or abandoned them. It must be the end of the world, she thought.

There were more ladies than usual staring out of windows at well-tended gardens, and no children about at all. And strangest of all, at least to the little girl's mind, there were two – no, three – very tall, cloaked and hooded… people?

She thought of them as people for lack of a better word, but they didn't seem quite real.

For one thing, they moved strangely, gliding after the men, who didn't seem to see them, and for another, she could sense nothing from them. People – real people – were always feeling something. Sometimes she found it irritating (especially mooning-about love, like too-hot, too-still summer air, all sticky and hard to breathe). Sometimes it was too much, the weight of all their wanting (need like hunger that never went away) or loneliness (cold loss and wanting all at once) or hate (hot, clawing, like a rabid dog) or confusion (making everything fuzzy like static on the radio), and she couldn't really pay attention to any of it, so she just let it fade into the background, like a voice that wasn't talking to her. But it was always _there._ The tall… not-people were like… holes in her awareness. Just _nothing._ She wouldn't have believed they were there at all, except she reached out and brushed the edge of a cloak as one fluttered past, taking no more notice of her than the men did of them.

The men they approached grew _colder_ and _heavier_ and _weaker_ as the cloaked… not-people drew near, loss and sadness and helplessness overcoming their anger and worry.

Even as she watched, one of _them_ reached down and wrapped a hand around the back of the head of a particularly weak-and-heavy man. It was all scabby and half-rotted, like the leper-beggars who lived on the streets down the _other_ way from the orphanage. (She used to go exploring that way more, since the orphans were never taken there on walks, but she stopped after a slimy, hungry-feeling man tried to grab her the one time, muttering about little girls and money.)

The leper-handed _thing_ bent down low, its hooded face momentarily covering the man's and… and… all the feelings spiraling off the man _disappeared_ , like a scent or a sound dissipating on the cool, damp air, or water running down a drain… into the… _thing_ , and out of the world. The tall… _thing_ slid back from the man, its hand hidden again in its cloak, and the man slumped to the ground in the middle of the road, his eyes staring, unblinking, at the pavement.

For a moment, the girl thought he was dead. She ran closer to see, only to find his chest still moving, slowly, as he breathed.

"What did you _do_ to him?" she asked the thing, marveling at the strangeness of this man who now seemed to feel nothing at all, like the tall creature itself.

It quirked its head to the side, silently. She could not see its face beneath its hood. Did it even _have_ a face?

"What _are_ you?" she asked, nearly bursting with curiosity. "How did you make him go all… quiet?"

It reached for its hood, infinitely slowly.

…

Behind the heavily-warded windows of a nearby town-home, another little girl shrieked. "Mummy! Mummy! The 'mentors are gonna Kiss a girl!"

Her father, reading his paper and sipping his tea, enjoying the last morning of normalcy before what he suspected would be a rather lengthy mission, looked up, startled. "What's that, poppet?"

"The ' _mentors_ , Daddy! They're gonna Kiss a little girl! Daddy, come _look_!"

That finally broke Draco Black out of his morning reverie enough for the emergency to register. "Powers above!" he exclaimed, glancing out the window. "Lori! Lorelei, call the Aurors!" He seized his wand from its place beside his teacup and rushed to the door, shouting a spell before he had even cleared the threshold. It was all too easy to imagine his own dark-haired little girl in this stranger's place, and the charm worked accordingly to protect the one person he held dearest in all the world. A silver stallion burst from a point of light, flying across the short distance that separated the child and the monsters – there were three of the wretched demons converging upon her – from the house.

It interposed itself between them, standing over the child and pawing the ground, rearing and kicking to drive the foul creatures back.

"What are _you_?" the girl was asking the Patronus by the time he reached her, shoving aside curious muggles – they might not be able to see the Dementors, but they certainly could see the effects of the defensive charm. She poked one of its legs tentatively, then frowned fiercely, pulling back as though burned.

"It's a Patronus Charm," Draco said quietly, his voice nearly drowned out by the cracks of apparition as the Aurors and Obliviators arrived on the scene, _finally_ – two minutes after the nick of time, as always.

"A what?" The little girl, turned to him. "And what are _they_?" she asked, pointing at the dementor that a pair of Aurors had managed to wrangle into custody. The other two, he suspected, must have fled. " _Tell me what's going on_!" she demanded, with all the angry petulance of any confused four-year-old, and to his extraordinary surprise, a brush of compulsion, untrained, but, in his professional opinion, remarkably well-formed. He ignored it, instead considering the girl before him.

She was, quite clearly, a witch – muggles could not see dementors at all, let alone form that sort of wandless compulsion. She was glaring fiercely at him with wide, startlingly blue eyes, almost lavender in the light. With her blue-black hair and death-pale skin, she could easily have been mistaken for one of his cousins at a glance, though her face was much too thin, and she was wearing what was clearly a muggle shift of some sort, which none of his cousins would allow any of their children to be caught dead in.

"Who are you?" he asked. "Where are your parents?"

"I asked you _first_!" she stomped a tiny foot. " _Tell me!"_

" _Stop that_ , you little brat!" he snapped, brushing off the second compulsion as well. He wondered where her parents were, and how they justified letting her run so wild as to attempt to compel perfect strangers on the street. She couldn't possibly be _muggleborn_ , could she?

"Sir?" one of the aurors said, approaching hesitantly. "My name is, uh, Junior Auror Caldwell, and, um… Sorry to interrupt, but I've been asked to take your statement? And your, um… daughter's?"

Of course, they sent the team's resident Blibbering Humdinger to ask the routine questions. Just what he wanted to deal with at the moment. His opinion of the Auror Corp (never high to begin with) was falling with every passing second. "Gods and Powers, man, grow a pair! You _are_ Auror Caldwell, and you have a few questions to ask us before you can get out of our hair! Make it quick! Snappy! Don't _ask_ me, tell me! And for the love of Magic, do _not_ introduce yourself as a _Junior_ Auror, got it?!"

"Um… yes, sir? I mean, yes, sir!" The lad very nearly _saluted._

The older wizard (though he was only twenty-eight, himself), rolled his eyes. "Black, Draco Cadmus, Foreign and Domestic Affairs, Operations Agent." He pulled his Ministry badge from his pocket, and the baby Auror blanched. Understandable, really, given that 'Foreign and Domestic Affairs' agents were not-so-secretly the Ministry's Problem Solvers throughout the Empire. Their assignments could range from diplomacy to assassination to spycraft: the public referred to them as 'Black Cloaks' and afforded them a semi-legendary status from London to Bombay to Sydney and Cape Town.

Draco ignored Caldwell's reaction. He continued giving his statement without even a pause: "I am a resident of number twenty-seven Ptarmigan Lane, that's _that_ one, right over there," he pointed at his house. "This young lady is _not_ my daughter. _My_ daughter spotted the Dementors lowering their hoods from the front window and shouted the alarm. My wife called you useless buggers while I ran to the girl's defense. I cast the Patronus from behind my wards. Muggle observation was unavoidable, but as you have a dementor in custody over there and a Kissed muggle, it should be fairly open-and-shut."

"Um… it may be," Caldwell said, then muttered under his breath, "I hope." He gulped nervously before adding, "And, uh… the girl?"

"Tell the lad what happened, missy," Draco ordered the child, rather perfunctorily. She looked almost as though she wanted to object, but she took a second look at the fear with which the Auror regarded him, and reconsidered (despite, he noted, no real sign of respect or fear from the girl herself).

"The tall things… the… De-mentors, did you call them?" she rolled the word around on her tongue a bit. "Dement-ors. Hm. They were following the heavy men, and one of them made one of the heavy men go all _quiet_ , and he fell over, and I wanted to see what it did, and then I asked what it was, and it was just about to tell me when the angel-horse chased it away," she pouted slightly.

The Black Cloak scowled at the young wizard, who was staring open-mouthed at the girl. Draco knew why, of course: it was, perhaps, one witch or wizard in a hundred who could face down a dementor without batting an eye, and even then, _curiosity_ was not the prevailing emotional response. Before the young Auror could become too suspicious of the child, he snapped, "Why aren't you writing this down, boy?!"

"Erm, yes, um…" Caldwell fumbled for a quill and a small scroll for notes. The girl hid a giggle behind her hand as she watched him scribble furiously for several minutes. Draco simply sighed.

"Look, Caldwell, I have an assignment meeting in…" He checked his pocketwatch for effect. "…just over two hours, and to be perfectly frank, I don't know where I'll be in three. I really haven't the time to just stand around while you twiddle your thumbs, so I'll make this easy for you: Driving off Dementors in defense of a child is pretty gods-cursed straightforward, but in the event that your Senior takes exception to writing all this up as a Class E Secrecy violation, he can take it up with my department head – here's his card – or Lord Black as the Head of the House. He'll take care of any fines and so on. Crystal?"

"Um… yes? I… think so? But, um… sorry, who is the girl, again?"

Drake raised an expectant eyebrow at the child, who sighed. "I'm Tam, Tamsyn Riddle. I live at the orphanage down there," she pointed up the street. "Wool's. The Matron's Mrs. Cole. She's prob'ly noticed I'm gone by now."

"You… live in an orphanage? A… muggle orphanage?" the young Auror asked.

"What's a muggle?"

"So, um… that's a 'yes,'" the boy muttered. "We'll have to obliviate her," he said somewhat more clearly, to Draco – as though he had any responsibility for or authority over the child whatsoever.

That said, obliviating her was entirely out of the question. Not only would the child likely resist any attempt to obliviate her – and in all probability successfully, given the quality of Ministry Obliviators and the facility with mind magic the girl had already demonstrated – but sending a magical child to live in a muggle orphanage was akin to sacrilege in Draco's mind. One had a duty to protect magical blood, regardless of whether the child was a muggleborn or, as might well be the case, a by-blow of his own House. If the child wasn't even living with her parents, there was no reason at all to force her to grow up outside of magic.

Meanwhile, the girl, Tamsyn, was frowning again. "What's _obiviate_?"

"Never-you-mind, Miss Riddle – it doesn't hurt a bit. I'll just get my friend over here, and she'll help you forget all about this nasty business – Suzie! Ms. Rhodes!"

"Don't be absurd," Draco interrupted. "You're not sending a magical child back to a muggle orphanage."

"But – it's _protocol_ ," the auror objected as a blue-robed obliviator with Auror-red trim approached.

"I don't want to go back!" the girl added her own opinion to the fray.

"There, you see?" the Black Cloak smirked triumphantly. "Hang the protocol! Look, I'll take custody of her, go through all the proper channels as necessary," (well, he would have _someone_ go through the proper channels – he wasn't lying about his eleven o'clock assignment meeting) "but –"

"Oi, Caldwell, I've still got six muggles to do for. What do you need?"

"I, um… that is… it's the girl. She's uh… muggleborn. Got to clear her and send her home…"

"I don't want to go back!" Tamsyn repeated, as Draco shuffled her behind him.

"I'm telling you, Caldwell, you are _not_ touching this little girl's memories!"

Rhodes scowled. "Caldwell, when you're done wasting my time, let me know." She turned on her heel, ignoring his demands for her to wait.

"Listen, _Junior_ Auror," Draco spat. "Even if you _do_ send her back, I'll have someone down to that dump by lunch to adopt her into the House of Black, so what say we skip the intermediate rigmarole, and simply allow me to take her across to mine right now? My wife and our solicitor will deal with the details, I can get off to work, you can write up your report, and we'll all get on with our days. Acceptable?"

Unfortunately it seemed the Blibberer had grown a pair after all, however, and at the most inconvenient time, as his response was a quavering denial. "I, um… we can't – I can't let you do that, Agent Black. You're well, um, that is… If you want to adopt her after, that's fine – nothing I can do to stop you, but I _have_ to have her _obliviated_! It's the _law_!"

"Oh, my dear Junior Auror," Draco grinned broadly. "You really _must_ be new," (He cut an index finger with a simple, wandless, wordless charm.) "if you haven't heard yet:" (He traced a rune in blood on the smooth skin of the girl's forehead.) "there are ways to get around _any_ law," (She blinked suspiciously at him, but did not object. Caldwell did: "Hey, what are you doing? _Stop_ that!") "and indeed some people to whom _the law_ simply _does not apply_."

Blacks and Black Cloaks were two of the latter category, in fact.

Drake ignored the Junior Auror's objections, muttering several long, Latinate phrases under his breath. There was a flash of light and the blood vanished. The girl shivered.

"That felt _strange_. What did you _do_?" she asked.

The elder wizard gave the younger the smuggest smirk he could muster as he answered her question, laying a possessive hand atop her dark head: "I've declared you a ward of House Black, before Magic Itself. Now unless the good Junior Auror wishes to take up the issue of why he saw fit to order the obliviation of a member of a Noble and Most Ancient House, he will _allow us to get on with our days_! Isn't that right, Mr. Caldwell?"

Caldwell nodded without thinking, in accordance with Draco's compulsion. The girl laughed, doubtless aware of what he had done. He silenced her with a look.

" _Very well,_ then. Miss Riddle, if you would, please go tell Mrs. Black what has occurred whilst I finish dealing with Mr. Caldwell. She will be happy to answer all of your questions, I'm sure."

"Number twenty-seven?" she asked, running off before he could answer. He found himself rather pleased that she had remembered. The intelligence and talent of the child would go far to ameliorate Arcturus' irritation at his acquisition of an unauthorized fosterling.

He turned back to the Junior Auror with a deceptively pleasant expression. "My dear Mr. Caldwell," he drawled, doing his utmost to channel the more political members of his family, "I think you will find that _the law_ is now on _my_ side in this instance."

Caldwell howled for his Senior. Drake sighed. He could only hope the more senior Auror would have a better understanding of _the way things worked._

…

"Mummy! Mummy! The girl's coming over here, now!"

"What's that, Dory?" Lorelei called from her husband's study, where she was busy packing the papers and books that he would not trust to the elves.

"The _girl_ ," Dorea shouted. "The one who was gonna be _Kissed_! She's at the door! Beastie! Open the door!"

" _Dorea_!" she chided her daughter, even as the elf popped to the front hall and disengaged the wards. "What have I told you about opening the door to strangers?"

"I _know_ , Mother, but she's just a girl! Hello!" the excitable child waved at the stranger.

The girl on the stoop, who looked vaguely offended to be called 'just a girl,' waved back, rather more guardedly. "'Lo," she said quietly before looking up at Lorelei. "Are you Missus Black?"

"I am," she answered, with a cool, society smile. "Lorelei Amelia Black, nee Lestrange. And you are…?"

The girl peered up at her with the best emotionless mask Lorelei had ever seen on a four-year-old – which was saying quite a lot, given the company her family kept. The only flaw was a shining light of curious interest around the corners of the child's eyes. "Tam Riddle. Mr. Black said I should tell you what happened, and you would answer all my questions."

Lorelei sighed, wondering why on earth her husband had seen fit to send a muggle child to speak with her, and what he was doing with the bloody aurors. At this rate, he was going to be late for his assignment meeting. He broke off gesticulating at two of the red-robed investigators to wave at her. She nodded, and invited the girl into the house with a small shrug. "I suppose you had better come in and have a seat, then. Dorea, take Miss Riddle to the front parlor, please. I will be in momentarily."

She could hear her daughter chattering animatedly and ordering the elf to fetch breakfast for their guest as she hastily tucked away the last of the maps and letters of credit into Drake's travelling wallet, alongside magical and muggle identification papers for six different identities (none of which were his own). She hoped that he wouldn't be gone too long this time – he had been on assignment the entire year Dory was three – but she rather doubted that her hope would be fulfilled.

She did keep an eye on the international news, after all, and she suspected that with the muggles of the civilized world in an uproar about their banking collapse, her husband would have his work cut out for him maintaining the tenuous peace between Magical Britain and the magical government of whatever far-flung corner of the Empire to which he was sent. Some of them were far more integrated with their muggle populations than Britain, and their muggles would doubtless be thinking that a confused and financially weakened Crown was a Crown ill-prepared to put down a rebellion. About half of the Indian states came to mind. It would be Draco's job to ensure that if, for example, the Indian provinces rebelled, they would do so without magic. Failing that, he would be tasked with concealing the existence of magic from the muggles of the United Kingdom by any means necessary. He would probably be gone for _months_. She sighed, setting the enchanted leather folder aside and heading toward the parlor.

"How old are you?" Dorea babbled, still excited, even after having had several minutes alone with their guest. Lorelei considered that perhaps she ought to find more occasions for the girl to socialize, if this was her reaction to company. "I'm four! I'll be five in two months and five days, not counting today. My birthday's January sixth! When's yours?"

"New Year's Eve," the other girl said, in a much lower tone and volume. "I'm almost four."

Lorelei raised a silent brow as she swept into the room. She would have guessed that the girl – Tamsyn? Tamara? – was older than that. She certainly seemed older than Dorea, from her behavior.

"Where do you live? I don't know of any Riddles. Are you from Hogsmeade? Where are your parents? Why were you alone out there with the 'mentors? Were you scared? I'd be scared, if it was me."

"Dorea, contain yourself," Lorelei said warningly when her daughter paused for breath.

The girl flushed slightly. "Sorry, Mother," she nearly whispered, even as their young visitor put on a confused expression.

"Of course I wasn't scared. Why would I be?"

Dorea's eyes grew very round. " _Because_ – the 'mentors nearly _Kissed_ you."

"So? Kisses are gross, but not _scary_."

This was too much for the young Black, who stuttered incoherently. Lorelei intervened, somewhat awkwardly, as she had never explained the existence of magic to a muggle before. "Tam, darling, this may be hard for you to believe, but magic is very real."

Tam blinked at her. "Okay?"

Perhaps, she thought, this was easier because the girl was so young, and therefore credulous. She smiled more genuinely, warming to her topic. "I am a witch. My husband, Draco, is a wizard. The spell he cast over you outside was intended to chase away a _Dementor_ , which is a type of demonic creature that feeds on emotion. They are invisible to muggles – non-magical people, that is – but they are very dangerous. If they are not restrained, they will do more than just feed on emotions. They can suck a person's soul out through their mouth, leaving an unthinking, unfeeling husk behind. That's called a Dementor's Kiss."

" _Oh_. Is that what happened to that man?"

" _Yes_!" Dorea exclaimed. "And it almost got you, too, but Daddy saved you. And me. I helped."

"What did you do?" Tam asked rather rudely.

" _I_ saw the 'mentor start to take off his hood. He was gonna Kiss you, too!"

"Maybe…" the visitor said doubtfully. "I wanted to see what it was, though."

"Nightmare monsters," Dorea mumbled. "They got a big sucking hole for a mouth, an' no eyes." She shivered.

"Who told you that?" Lorelei frowned.

"Uncle Delph and Cousin Cephus," the girl said promptly.

Of course. Bloody Blacks. It was a miracle her Drake was as sane as he normally appeared, given the things those lunatics thought it was appropriate to tell a child. "I will be having _words_ with those hooligans," she sneered, before adding, "but they're not wrong."

"Not wrong… so that _is_ what they look like?" Tam asked. "Monsters?"

Lorelei nodded. "To witches. As I said, muggles cannot see them at all."

"Huh. I knew they weren't really real," the little girl grinned.

"What do you mean? You could see them?" Dorea asked, saving her mother the trouble. "Why'd you go closer then, dummy?"

"I _told_ you! I wanted to see! It made the man go all _quiet_ , and I wanted to know how!"

"What do you mean ' _quiet_ '?" Lorelei asked, still attempting to come to terms with the fact that the little girl in her muggle dress was apparently a witch.

" _You_ know, like how he was all cold and heavy and weak, and then all that kind of just went away."

Dorea gave their guest a baffled expression. "Cold and heavy? Uncle Delph said the 'mentors make you feel sad, like you'll never be happy again."

The stranger shrugged. "They all feel like that anyway. Didn't you hear about the end of the world?"

"Ragnarok?"

"Ragnar-what?"

"That's how Grandmother Sophia says the world ends. But I think there's sup'osed to be giants, not the 'mentors…"

Lorelei made a mental note to talk to her mother about the sort of things she was teaching her daughter. "Not Ragnarok, poppet. There's been a muggle banking crisis. I'll tell you about it later. For now, I believe we're getting off track. Tam, what happened after my husband cast the Patronus?"

"That's the angel-horse, right?"

The young mother nodded, even as her daughter asked, "What's an angel?"

The other child shrugged. "It's a church thing."

"Like the Inqu'stition?!"

"The what?"

"Girls!" Lorelei interrupted firmly.

Dorea froze on the cusp of her next question, substituting, "Sorry, Mother."

Tam said nothing, looking from Dorea to Lorelei and back several times before finally answering the question: "The… patonus? It chased the dementors back and stood over me until Mr. Black got there, and then there were a bunch of men in red dresses that wanted to send me back to the orphanage, and Mr. Black said no, and the blue-dress woman said the red-dress that was questioning us should stop wasting her time, and Mr. Black said they weren't touching my memory, and something about how the law is for other people, and he drew on my head with blood, here," she pointed, "and said I was a ward of the House of Black. Does that mean I'm adopted?"

Lorelei froze, completely incapable of comprehending these last few phrases. "I'm sorry dear, could you repeat that?"

The girl looked confused. "What? He said the red-dress man was threatening a member of the House of Black, and said I should tell you what happened…"

"Please excuse me for a moment," the lady of the house said stiffly, rising from the sofa and heading toward the door, intent on having a moment with her husband to clarify precisely what he thought he was doing, adopting a fosterling less than two hours before haring off to destinations unknown for an equally unknown span of time, without having the good grace to consult his head of house, or more importantly, _her_.

He met her in the front hall, wearing an expression that matched her own, though by his grumbling, _his_ was due to dealing with the aurors, whereas _she_ had altogether more enduring reasons to be frustrated nearly beyond words. She cast a silent anti-eavesdropping charm before tearing into him, though she could hardly maintain her rage when he caught her eye and asked coldly, "What would you have had me do? Send her back to some muggle children's home? She is a witch, Lorelei, and I'll snap my wand if she's not a natural legilimens to boot. For her sake and that of everyone around her, it is best if she is brought into our world sooner rather than later."

Lorelei shuddered slightly at the sense of foreboding that settled over her as she recognized that particular tone: the one that said _this is what's happening, and damn the consequences._ She squared her shoulders and glared down her nose at her husband. He wasn't _wrong_ , but… "I hope you know what you're doing," she hissed before turning on her heel and heading back to the children.

When she arrived back in the sitting room, she took a minute to compose herself: it would hardly do for the children to see her cursing the walls blue about husbands who did whatever they thought was best, with no thought for the fact that _they_ wouldn't be the ones cleaning up whatever messes resulted. Oh, no. _They_ , or rather, _he_ , would be off gallivanting the world, living the glamorous life of a spy or a diplomat or whatever the Nation required of him, while _she_ attempted to ameliorate the fury of the Head of House Black on discovering their unauthorized ward, pacifying the Ministry, and integrating a three-year-old muggleborn legilimens into their household, hopefully without any accidental mind magic, because, Powers knew, she was no mind mage herself…

 _Bastard_ , she thought, fixing a polite society smile in place as she opeed the door. The girls turned to her attentively.

"Welcome to the House of Black, Miss Riddle," she said serenely, hiding every trace of unease with an effectiveness born of long practice.

The girl grinned, a near-feral expression of triumph, which quickly turned to bafflement and discomfort as Dorea squealed and threw herself on the street urchin in an overly eager embrace.

"I've always wanted a sister!"

"Um…"

Oh, yes, this was going to be a _joy_.


End file.
